Data are an integral part of the normative world and therefore ethics. With the advent of big data and data science, increased attention has been given to the ethics of artificial intelligence. However, data ethics is broader than that and must now be considered on its own as a field of ethics. In this paper, we make the case for the importance of data ethics and propose a general framework to support organizations in adopting ethical data practices. We provide the examples of statistics and standards as two contexts within which data ethics can be advanced and where advancements have already been made.
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